With his leadership openly questioned, Archbishop Paul Cremona yesterday chose to refrain from addressing his critics’ concerns.

In a one-line reply to this newspaper, a spokesman for the Archbishop said: “His Grace remains committed to serve the Church to the best of his abilities.”

It was Mgr Cremona’s ability to lead the Church that was questioned by columnist Fr Joe Borg, a media specialist and former public relations officer to Archbishop Joseph Mercieca.

Writing in The Sunday Times of Malta, Fr Joe compared the Maltese Church’s leadership to the Nationalist Party’s demoralised and rudderless state after the 1976 electoral defeat.

The comparison is loaded. Despite the PN suffering its second consecutive defeat at the hands of the Labour Party led by Dom Mintoff in 1976, its leader George Borg Olivier was refusing to step down.

Dr Borg Olivier was eventually forced to resign as the younger generation considered him physically incapable of performing his duties and standing up to his popular arch-antagonist Mr Mintoff. The former PN leader was also criticised for procrastinating when taking decisions.

Fr Joe called the leadership situation in the Church “the elephant in the room”, acknowledged privately but not spoken about publicly.

Writing about it had now become “a matter of conscience” Fr Joe said, justifying his openly critical analysis of Mgr Cremona’s leadership in the face of the need for changes to give the Church new verve.

Doubts have been voiced over the Archbishop’s leadership of the Church. Photo: Matthew Mirabelli

Doubts over Mgr Cremona’s leadership had surfaced back in 2012 when he had experienced health problems due to exhaustion. The Curia has never publicly said what the health problems were, leaving room for speculation among the faithful.

Senior Church officials, who spoke to this newspaper on condition of anonymity, said the Archbishop’s absence from the public sphere as a result of health problems and the control exerted over him by veteran Curia insiders was probably the “elephant in the room” referred to by Fr Joe.

But question marks about the Archbishop’s leadership style had started to emerge just three years after he was ordained.

In a 2010 interview with The Sunday Times of Malta, he had defended his style, which he described as “not authoritarian”.

“It is a great challenge for me whenever I have to impose a decision. I prefer dialogue. I am a person who listens to people,” he said when asked who was running the show at the time.

The Archbishop was also conspicuous by his absence over the past year when it was left to Auxiliary Bishop Charles Scicluna to front the Church’s reaction to the civil union law.

After a joint statement in October 2013 issued by the bishops, Mgr Scicluna made public statements, prompting many to question who was at the helm.